The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello, Golden Boys and Cool Girls.

This is the Slate Audio Book Club's discussion of Gone Girl,

The Thriller by Gillian Flynn. I'm Dan Cois, editor of the Slate Book Review, and I'm joined here

in Slate's DC Recording Studio by Hannah Rosen, Slate's double X editor. Hi, Hannah. Hi, Dan. And joining

us from New York is Emily Bazelon, a Sl slate senior editor. Hi, Emily. Hi, guys.

So, just like basically everyone I know, I spent one night of my vacation recently, staying up until two in the

morning because I could not bear the notion of putting down Gone Girl and going to bed before I finished

it. Partially, it was because I really wanted to know what was going to happen, obviously,

but partially it was also that I did not relish the idea of going to bed with these characters' voices echoing in my skull still.

Gone Girl is about Nick and Amy Dunn, who are just about to celebrate their five-year wedding anniversary in their home in North Carthage, Missouri, when Amy suddenly disappears one morning.

The first half of the book intersperses Nick's account of the days following her disappearance as he searches for her and suspicion settles upon him with Amy's diary entries from the preceding years of

their relationship.

And then the second half of the book, well, we'll get to that in our discussion, which

it should be noted for listeners, will contain plenty of spoilers for this extremely

spoilable book.

Among many other things, Hannah and Emily Gone Girl, is a portrait of a marriage gone seriously, horribly sour.

And so my first question is, for both of you really, but I'll start with Hannah, I ask it with a little bit of hesitancy.

Did either of you, while you were reading the book, get so wrapped up in it that you started thinking, oh, God, what if

my marriage is actually just like a toxic witch's brew of passive aggression and sociopathie?

Like, is that us?

Well, I did murder my first husband, so it rang very true to me.

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